Paradox
by Pearcem
Summary: Clary Fray has a lot on her mind. Art. The Gallery. What she's going to do this weekend with Izzy and Simon. How she's ever going to pass math class. Jace Herondale.
1. Nothing Good

**Yay! Finally got this up.**

 **And I know that there is probably going to be some people confused about the title but it will at make sense soon enough. Omfg I'm so pumped for this.**

 **So, for anyone who has not read my story Fading, this is one of the three stories there's going to be. Each story can be read as a standalone, and in no particular order, though you might understand better if you did read Fading, because this is with the same version, we'll say, of Clary and Jace, that I created in Fading, just in high school. You know, before (I'm not going to spoil anything here, just in case) everything happened.**

 **And it would seem that I'm out of things to say.**

* * *

She looks so different—so much… _older_ , I think as I watch Isabelle from across the room. With her hair hanging down he back in a smooth, sleek waterfall of ink and black liner rimming her eyes, framed by voluminous lashes, she really looks like she belongs here with these high school kids. It funny, really, that I'll be one of them in a few measly weeks.

The air is hot and heavy with cigarette smoke and the stench of alcohol, the humidity bleeding in from outside isn't helping all that much, either.

I've never been an overly social person, but I thought that maybe when Izzy invited me to this party that, according to one of the girls she used to dance with, I would have fun. You know, let loose a little. Yeah, well that hasn't happened yet and I'm not anticipating that it will.

Simon pushes up his glasses back up the bridge of his nose beside me. It must be annoying to constantly have to do that. Maybe when his new pair comes in he won't have to do it as often.

"Fun party, right?" Simon gives me a tentative grin, and I nearly have to do a double take—I don't know why, but I'm still not used to Simon without his braces. I'm not used to the relatively white, straight-toothed smile he flashes my way every morning on our walk to school.

"Yeah, totally."

Cheers emanate from a table at the other end of the crowd. Through the gaps between the gyrating bodies, I can see a ping pong table with solo cups set up all over it. I don't fight my eye roll, like I might usually. _Beer pong_.

Among the cheering crowd surrounding the table is my brother, his white hair painfully prominent among the blondes and brunettes. Then again, so is my bright red hair.

I watch through the gaps in the thick crowd as a hand launches a small white ball at the solo cups. The skin of the hand is tan, and I watch in something akin to awe as the owner of said tan-skinned hand comes into view.

 _Gold, gold, gold_ , is all I can see—all I can think. Gold eyes framed by golden curls atop his golden head. Self-consciously, I begin twirling a strand of my horribly dry hair, though it isn't like he can see me through the ever-growing crowd closing in on him around the ping pong table.

And, despite myself, I keep an eye out for the golden boy who had been the star of the beer pong table all night, even after I leave the party.

* * *

 ** _Two years later..._**

 _He's not worth all this time, energy_ , I remind myself even as I seethe with my hand gripped impossibly tight around the edge of my locker door. _I hate him. Hate him, hate him, hate him_.

 _Hate. Hate. Hate._

"What crawled up your pants?"

I spin on my heel at the voice, a little of the anger and frustration seems to seep away. "Si," I release my poor locker door from the death grip I had had it in. "Hey. What's up?"

He frowns at me, his glasses sliding a few millimetres down his nose. "Don't tell me he's at it this early in the morning."

I nod my expression surely a surly mixture of bitterness and anger that my mother would not approve of. There's a word for people like Jace Herondale: "Asshole," Simon mutters with about as much severity as someone as easy going and goofy as Simon _can_ muster.

"Tell me about it," I sigh, closing my locker door softly and leaning into the cold, blue-painted metal, feeling the dents in the door against my back. The coolness of the metal melts through my clothes, and I hope, somewhere in the back of my mind, that my cheeks won't be so red by the time Simon and I get to class.

"I would, but we're going to be late for homeroom." And with that, Simon and I walk side by side to homeroom. Of course not without Jace yelling from within the protective barrier of his expansive friend group: "See you in class, Bloody Clary!"

* * *

Homeroom was Hell, what with Jace and his friends murmuring in low voices to each other every few seconds before looking over at me and then proceeding to either chuckle lowly, or howl in sort of quiet hyena-like laughter.

And don't even get me started on math class or my European history class.

But it's all okay, I remind myself as I toss my bag into the back room of my Mom's gallery. Even the break room—a place usually depicted as a bland, white room with a possibly-working coffee maker and maybe a microwave that makes a funny noise as it cooks your food—has pieces of art, little decorations that make the room bright, strung about; on the walls, on the counter, atop the fridge.

"Mom?" I call out to the rather empty gallery.

"Oh, Clary," she smiles, sliding smoothly past me—to the storage room. "It's been nearly dead today, but I do have an appointment coming in—about now. Can you watch the store while I go and get the paintings out of the—"

"Yeah, Mom, I got it," I tell her and she nods in appreciation, passing by me with a swift, light kiss to my temple.

My mom's gallery is, and has always been, one of my favourite places in Westchester. Not that I like a whole lot here. I've been living off the idea of moving to New York when I graduate since I was eleven or twelve, I think. And considering that the dream is still living and breathing, unlike my dream to become a mermaid like Ariel when I was six, I think it's safe to say that I'll follow through with it. Unless, you know, I do actually figure out I can sprout a tail and rock a seashell bra sometime soon—which is about as likely to happen as Jace falling head over heels for me. So, yeah, I think I'll start applying to colleges and or universities in New York sometime next year.

The bell attached to the front door of the studio chimes just as I settle myself behind the long, rectangle desk stacked high with art catalogs and receipts and paint brushes and sample work my mom has done.

I look up, prepared to plaster on my customer-designated smile that my mother tends to roll her eyes at (the customers eat it all up, though, so I don't particularly care what she thinks), when a familiar face, cold and ever regal, appears in my line of sight.

Maryse Lightwood: wife of esteemed business man, and my dad's colleague of sorts, Robert Lightwood, and mother to Alec and Isabelle Lightwood. Though, much to my disappointment, it is not Isabelle following her mother in through the front door, but Jace, her adoptive brother and the bane of my existence.

"Clarissa, lovely to see you," is her choice of greeting. A devilish smirk is shot at me through his blond curls, and I force a smile for Maryse, glaring heatedly at Jace once she passes by.

"Yes, _Clarissa_ "—my name rolls terribly smooth off of his tongue and it makes my insides jump up into my throat. I want to hurl—" _lovely_ to see you. What has it been? One…two hours?"

"Perhaps," I say to him as Maryse gazes appreciatively at one of my mom's best paintings, hung up on the wall farthest from Jace and I. "But every second away from you is one spent in paradise."

A flicker of something like surprise passes in his eyes, before his lips curl back into that customary smirk that promises nothing good. "Is that honestly the best you've got in your arsenal, Gingerbread?"

I wrinkle my nose at his newest choice of name-slash-insult for me.

"What? You don't like it?"

I choose to ignore him, returning to flipping through the art catalog, admiring the full-page print of a "new, up and coming" artist's painting. Not to come off cocky or egotistical or full of myself—like a certain someone standing opposite me—but I'm nearly positive I could do better if I had the sort of life where I could fully devote myself to my art. But, alas, school and too much homework prevents me from doing so.

"Oh, _come on_ , Freckles," Jace twirls a strand of my hair around his long finger, grinning—slightly sadistically if you ask me—when I jerk back furiously from his touch. Not that he really touched me. He touched my hair, but still. If there's at least one thing I might have hoped he learnt from the girls hanging off of his arm at every opportunity, it's that you simply do not touch a girl's hair.

Apparently, though, he's learned nothing from being surrounded by girls every day.

Shooting Jace a parting glare, I head over to Maryse, hoping to escape Jace—even if that means discussing how well her new paintings will fit in with the marble desks at the Lightwood Building that her husband owns—and did she mention how her husband owns the building?—the _entire_ thing?

So that's what I do—I make incredibly boring small talk with Maryse about what paintings she might next purchase from my mom. I hate to admit it, but Jace's company might have been more stimulating than this. Not by much, but I'm almost sure I'd prefer his company to that of his adoptive-mother's.

It's when Maryse begins to ramble on about some charity gala she and Isabelle are to attend, and that I should come along with them and Jace that my Mom makes an appearance from whatever had managed to distract her for so long in that boxy little storage room of ours.

"Jocelyn," Maryse smiles as warmly as possible for a cold-hearted woman like herself. She hugs my mother as I stand off to the side, leaning my right shoulder against the wall between two paintings.

"Unsettling, isn't it?" Jace asks from behind me.

"What?" I pivot to look at him, feeling a few of my curls spill over my shoulder to hang down my back. I definitely need a trim, I think as I observe my split ends dejectedly.

The blond nods his head in my Mom and Maryse's general direction before focusing his stare back onto me. "Her…showing affection. Even if it is feigned, it's unnatural. Can you even believe she's managed to raise kids who didn't turn out completely shitty?" As he finishes his sentence, Jace rolls his shoulders—backwards and forwards, forwards and backwards, repeat.

"I mean…she raised you, didn't she? And you're not all that great." I say casually, tracing the seam of my jeans absent-mindedly.

"I'm wounded, really, terribly wounded," Jace deadpans, looking up to the ceiling as if praying for the strength not to wrap his hands around my neck and strangle me where I stand.

"I try," I give him my best smile. "And I'd love to stay here and chat it up with you, but I've got better things to do with my time. Like watch paint dry." With that, I walk to the back room, where I hope to spend a few hours lost in the colours and brushstrokes and the semi-smooth surface of the canvas as my brush glides across it.

* * *

The time that it takes my mom to finish up with Maryse Lightwood is nearly the same amount of time it takes for me to finish up my painting. Except it isn't me that goes over time. It's my mom, with Maryse.

And I can't innocently say that I'm not laughing my everything off when she comes into the backroom, faintly flushed, a few more hairs out of place than before, and murmuring under her breath—though it is _what_ she is murmuring under her breath that really sets me off.

She's mocking both mother and son.

"'Your work is _so beautiful_. Simply divine, Jocelyn. _Divine_.'" Her face, at this point, is very close to matching her hair. But I don't stop her just yet. "'I aspire to one day have a daughter in-law as beautiful and talented as your own daughter, Jocelyn. She is simply the sweetest thing—and _stunning_. Clarissa must have the boys lining up _out the door_.'" She speaks in such a high, nasally tone that I can't help myself; I begin to laugh, and soon enough, I can't stop for the life of me.

I'm in fits, but I somehow manage to get out: "She did not say that."

My mom turns to me, her cheeks rivaling the red on my canvas for the brightest thing in the room, her hands up by the either side of her head. "She _did_. And you should have heard Jace, he seemed to be attempting to flatter me with his words, please Maryse with them, and mock her at the same time! It was a train-wreck, absolutely horrendous, Clary! How could you think to leave me out there alone with them for so long?"

My stomach is sore, like a coil wound tight from laughing so hard. I wouldn't be surprised if I peeled up my shirt to find abs under it—okay, I totally _would_ be surprised, but I'd also be ecstatic, because, if I had abs, I wouldn't have to worry about eating so much junk food all the time. And god knows I've eaten more than my fair share of the world supply.

"I already had to deal with Jace today, it seemed only fair that you had to go through the same torture I did." I shrug. My reply is true enough, but then again, I really don't think my mom whipped out her best insults and flung them at one of our top customers.

I can only imagine if Maryse Lightwood found out the things Jace and I call each other. I think she might have a heart attack. Not that anyone would complain.

But morbid thoughts of bad things happening to not so great people are for other days—the days when you're just so ticked off at everything in general that even the floor is worth glaring at, as Simon once said to me.

I head home with the odd feeling of Jace having invaded of sacred space of mine, and I can't shake the feeling, even as I finally sink into bed after suffering through a few hours of homework. And though I feel completely exerted, my mind won't stop going on and on about absolutely nothing.

* * *

 **How was it? Should I keep going? Drop me a review and we'll see what you all think**


	2. Explode

Just like any other day, this one started out awful.

First, I woke up late—and no one in my house thought it might be a good idea to go and wake me up. Next, my flatiron decided to try and electrocute me on the one day out of the year I attempt to use it. And finally, I had to get a ride to school with Jon, because Mother Nature also hates me, and it started to pour the moment I stepped over the threshold of our front door.

Now, leaning with my back flat against the dented door of my locker, my head tilted skywards and my eyes—surely decorated with dark half-moons—closed, I'm wishing I wouldn't have woken and up and slept straight till noon. Past noon, even.

I don't think I've ever slept in that long before. Not that it matters.

"Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning," Izzy comments in a sing-song voice as she strides up beside me, her hair hanging around her face and her feet clad in a pair of leather boots.

I crack an eye. "You haven't even talked to me yet. How can you tell?"

"Oh," she says simply with a shrug, "I can't. But those bags speak for themselves, babe." Obviously, she's pointing out the crescents under my eyes. It would be too unlike her not to point such a thing out. Even if it's more than manifest.

I grumble some sort of demonic noise at her under my breath and open my eyes, pushing off of my locker, my books for English Lit tucked safely under my arm. "Tell me again, what did you come over here for? Because this isn't going to work if we're both in bad moods and neither of us is going to play Sally-freaking-Sunshine." I tell her snappishly, readjusting the hold I have on my books.

Izzy rolls her obsidian eyes. "I thought that you might like to know that my cousin is going to ask you on a date sometime today."

"Your cousin?" I raise my brows at her, suspiciously, surprised, even. "Remind me why I would want to go out with your kin? If he's anything like you, I think I'll pass, thank you very much. One Lightwood is more than enough to handle."

" _Clar-ee_!" Stamping her foot on the floor like a kindergartener, Izzy drags out my name in the longest fashion possible, until there mere pitch of her voice makes me want to smash my head into the lockers just behind me.

"Fine! _Fine_! Just shut up, for God's sake!"

Shooting me a pearly smile that beams innocence to anyone within a five mile radius, she says: "We're kind of cousins, but that's irrelevant. His name is—"

" _Oh, Bloody Clary_ ," Jace's voice rings out above all, though most only pause their conversations to quickly glance at and appraise his appearance. A loose black t-shirt over his slender form toned and corded with muscle has nearly every girl drooling, and me on the verge of admitting, _yeah, okay he's mildly attractive_. I steel my gaze and turn away, returning to my conversation with Isabelle.

And like he wasn't just standing ten feet down the hall a few seconds ago, he's leaning his arm on the locker beside mine, flashing a charming grin. "I thought maybe after this long you would've grown tired of me and switched schools, but"—his gaze rakes me up and down before returning to meet mine—"I see not."

"Buzz off," Izzy waves her hand at his face, coming mere millimetres away from swatting his perfect little nose. His slightly taken-off-guard expression makes me smirk a little. "Clary and I are talking about her date." Because he so needed to know I have a date, right?

"A date? With _that_ face?" Jace wrinkles up his nose in feigned disgust. I know I'm not ugly; I look like my mom, and she's pretty. Though between the stick-thin limbs and copper-spattered skin, I'm a Raggedy Ann to her Barbie doll.

"You're just jealous that it isn't you wining and dining her," Isabelle tells him with finality, a flip of her long inky hair closing the conversation completely. Jace rolls his eyes at the total absurdity of the idea, and I fight to do the same.

"I'll be jealous of whatever loser is taking out Vampire Bait over here when the sky legitimately comes crashing down on top of us—and even then I'll only be jealous because she died upon impact and I'm buried under the rubble." I groan lowly and Isabelle flips him off, narrowly avoiding a teacher seeing her middle finger stuck up high for all to see.

 _That'll be the day_ , I tell myself as Izzy and I part ways, her tuning right down the fork in the hallway and me turning left.

* * *

After an art class at Tisch, I head over to Simon's house, where Mrs. Lewis welcomes me inside with open arms, offering a tray of cookies to snack on while Simon does whatever it is that Simon does when Iz and I aren't around.

When Simon emerges from the hallway and his hair is messy and little beads of water are dripping down the sides of his face, a few stray rivulets dropping onto his gamer tee, it becomes painfully evident that he was in the shower. How did I not hear the water running? Maybe my senses were on overload while devouring about twelve of Mrs. Lewis's to-die-for cookies and weren't functioning properly. Yeah, that's viable.

"Hey," Simon offers me a smile. "How was Tisch?"

"Tough—but I loved it," I tell him as I hop down from the barstool set up by the Lewis's kitchen island, all but skipping over to him. Despite having an impossible amount of homework to plough through, I feel good, light. Painting allows me to let out my emotions—just like people venting in journals or ranting to their friends helps them let out some of the bottled up stuff.

"So, what should we do? That crap-ton of homework we were assigned or video games?" He grins, waggling his eyebrows at me—we both know what we're going to do: play video games and procrastinate until we're rushing to finish all our homework before I have to head back home.

But with Simon, the math and science whiz, it should be a breeze. And then all there's left to do is attempt to get through my English homework without having to beg Jon for help with it. Though I'm not so optimistic that he'll help me without a price, even if he is my brother.

Si pushes open the door to his bedroom, and I walk through, taking a running start before I catapult onto his hastily-made bed. He shakes his head, and I laugh faintly as he crouches down in front of his Xbox, turning it on and handing me a metallic blue controller. Grinning at the back of his head, I press the button in the center of the controller, watching as it lights up bright green beneath my fingertip.

For the next few hours, I manage to escape the homework jammed into my bag, though it's more than annoying when Jace's routine smirk keeps flashing like an exit sign in my mind.

* * *

"But Jon—" I fish around in my vocabulary for something to say, something that will convince him that it is, in fact, worth it to help me.

"But Sissy," Jon mocks, flipping the page of his textbook, his eyes scanning over the lines of the abnormally small text all our textbooks are printed in. After a moment, the white-haired boy across from me sighs, looking up with his head propped on his hand. "Look, I couldn't help you, even if I wanted to."

"Why no—"

"Because it has to be an original piece by you, and we have the same English teacher. I'm pretty sure he'd be able to tell that it was influenced by me. And besides—it has to come from _you_. It can't be some regurgitated bullshit I fed you while skimming over the History textbook—people would be able to tell. You and I, Sissy, we're very different people." Jon gestures between the two of us, and I know he's not just talking about physical differences. He's talking about the way we think, how we put two and two together, and our views on different aspects of things.

I huff, slouching in my chair, my shoulders curled inwards and my face hidden by a shield of ever-slowly darkening red hair. "I hate when you're right," I mumble to myself.

"Now that that's out of the way, I hope you know to do a good job on this one because it's your semester project and worth like, fifteen or thirty percent of your final grade." Jon says as though he's trying to be nonchalant about it, but he just sounds a little high-strung. Especially with the way his arms are crossed over his chest right now.

Despite the fact that my eyes bulge at hearing those numbers, I say, "Yeah, I know. And how much is your history final worth? Like, a good chunk of your final grade? Maybe you should be focusing on that, instead of me, Jonny." I ruffle his hair (he swats me away, shooting me an expression that's somewhere between a scowl and an icy glare), heading upstairs to start chipping away at this particularly infuriating English assignment.

I take my sweet time mounting the stairs, definitely preferring it to the mad dash I performed going down them this morning. When I get to the landing, I exhale heavily through my nose, rubbing at my temples. I already know how this is going to go, and it's not going to be easy.

* * *

It's nearly eleven at night; I realize glancing at the clock to my right. _And you still don't have anything done_. I'll be lucky to even pass this English course with a less than admirable average.

Maybe I should drop out of school and become psychic because my earlier prediction has rung true, nearly word for word: I didn't get a thing done. I don't know. Do I have enough education under my belt to become an artist yet? I doubt it, though I _am_ taking those classes at Tisch…classes my parents would likely stop paying for and forbid me from going to if I ever dropped out of school.

 _God_. I groan obnoxiously loud and rub my hands slowly down my face.

Not a second later Jon is pounding on the wall between our rooms, telling me to shut up because he's "trying to sleep". Yeah, I'm _sure_ that's what he's doing.

Does he think I can't hear him clapping along to the Friends theme song every half hour?

Though I do plan to keep it down—even if the supposed loudness only came from me groaning louder than necessary, or normal—if only because my parents are sleeping just down at the end of the hall.

The last thing either of them wants to find, I'm sure, is their daughter all but ripping her hair out of her scalp at eleven twenty or so at night and sobbing dramatically while my body is thrown carelessly over my laptop.

Deciding it isn't worth my time or effort to sit here determinedly and have a staring match with the blank Word document open on my screen and the flashing cursor, I close my laptop, setting it on the floor, nearly under my bed.

I don't bother changing out of my shorts, rather stripping off my top, leaving me in the plain cotton bra that I, admittedly, don't really need. Attempting to run a hand through my hair, I sigh and drop it when it quickly becomes stuck on a knot.

* * *

Jon and I shared a wordless breakfast, him gnawing down on a too-green banana and me slurping down some Froot Loops. That was about the extent of my interaction with my family before Isabelle and Simon picked me up, unless you count my mom walking into the kitchen, her sleepy expression a little surprised to see both of us up and ready—as if that doesn't happen every morning—and her hair just short of a rat's nest.

Thinking back on it now, begrudgingly seated beside Jace in chemistry, I would have much rather tolerated my somewhat insane family than tolerate the blond boy fidgeting beside me. He keeps rolling his shoulders and shaking his leg and running his hands through his hair—ruining it, to my satisfaction. Though his messy hair doesn't seem to bother the girls behind us and beside us that have been staring either a little abashedly or unashamed at him for the entire period.

Which, so far, has been a grand total of fifteen minutes, that is, if you count the five it took for everyone to rearrange themselves after Coach re-did the seating chart. No longer am I lab partners with Simon, but rather with Jace, the incompetent, while Simon, now seated across the room has Aline Penhallow as a lab partner. On a scale of one to ten of how loud and fidgety in comparison to Jace she is, Aline is a negative six.

Suffice to say I'm a little jealous and mildly bitter. It could have been anyone— _literally, anyone_ else in this entire class and I would have been fine with it. But no, Coach likes to make me suffer, obviously.

"Should we start the lab or are you just going to shake the table the entire time?" I say monotonously, turning my head slowly to look at Jace's profile. He's just staring ahead at the white-smudged blackboard.

Probably feeling my gaze weighing heavily upon him, Jace looks down at me, his face schooled into somewhat cold neutrality. "I don't want to do this with you—"

"And you think I do, how highly you must think of yourself."

"But I also can't afford to fail this class—so, yes, Gingerbread, by all means, let's get started." His neutral expression his turned into a little bit of a sneer by the end of his sentence. I merely turn to face forwards, staring down at the empty glass beakers lined up in front of both of us. Chemicals in different test tubes are lined up in test tube racks, and I don't know if I'll be able to even bring myself to attempt to pronounce the names of them after sneaking into the basement with Jon and binge watching Friends nearly all night long.

But it's not really a choice, so I suck it up and read through the lab.

* * *

Sitting in my English class, my stomach still aches with the remnants of laughter. Isabelle keeps glancing sideways at me, though I ignore. She would surely think me insane for being this happy if she found out that Jace and I now sat next to each other in chemistry.

But that has nothing to do with it—well, that's actually a lie.

Jace was pouring in one of the chemicals into the beaker, his face nearly directly in the thing, and despite the fact that I kept telling him it was the wrong one and it would not react the way it was supposed to, he didn't listen to me, and then he poured the chemical into the concoction we had created.

And what happened to Golden Boy? The mixture exploded in his face—and his close proximity to the beaker didn't help much at all—singed the ends of his hair, so now they're quite a bit shorter and black—along with his eyebrows, which now look unfitting to his tawny hair colour (you know, because they're black), and his forehead, cheekbones, chin—and well, everything is black. At least the chemical reaction didn't cause any serious damage—except maybe to his pride…and dignity, considering he has to walk around the rest of the day like that because both of his parents were apparently unreachable.

For the rest of the day, I'm laughing quietly, barely heard over the roaring chatter of the student body. But Jace—when I pass him in the halls, he hears me, and despite what I might have expected…he smiles at me, looking something I can't quite place my finger on with the ends of his hair singed off and his skin darker because of the black. He smiles at me like we're friends.

Not a smirk or a grin, but…a smile. A small one, albeit, but a smile nonetheless.

As I head to the parking lot when the final bell rings, my brain kind of fogs over and I get a little dazed—because it was Jace who made me laugh and grin uncontrollably nearly all day. Not Izzy or Simon. _Jace_.

I don't know why—maybe it's my unmatched stubbornness, but I can't stop thinking about it…even when I'm busy, thoughts of it are hovering like clouds in front of the sun somewhere in the back of my head.

And what's even worse is that I don't entirely mind.

* * *

 **Did anyone get the Vampire Bait joke? No, well it was worth a shot. I meant it like cause Clary's hair is so red and bright it looks like blood (a beacon to vampires, bait, you know?).**

 **Anyways.**

 **oesteffel: Soon, my pet, soon.**

 **Shauna Kullden: Honestly, I thought Maryse's comments were a little on the hilarious side too because, well, they do end up getting married and not to spoil anything (keep it a secret, kay *giggles*) but Maryse doesn't get invited to Clace's wedding. Or Sizzy's. You'll find out why much later on in the story. Like two years later in the story. And Maryse is cold blooded for reasons that will come up later on.**

 **A Brunette Angel: Thank you:)) And you know how Jace is distancing himself as the due date nears? You'll understand more of why in this story, you'll kind of see him evolve and change, and watch the things that unfold within the story shape the characters that we all love. (Honestly still not sure how people still like Jace in Fading, but I mean, he's Jace.) I think everyone will really have that moment of "Oh, wow that was a little obvious from the start, wasn't it?" when they find out the reasoning behind the name.**

 **Janna: I was going to explain why Jace and Izzy have more of a sibling dynamic in this story than Fading, but I realized I'll spoil a whole lot of stuff if I do that, and well, that wouldn't be much fun, would it?**

 **Mentirosas: I KNOW I CACKLED TO MYSELF WHILE WRITING THAT PART. And I can guarantee you that, yes, Jace was in fact rolling his he whole time (though only when Maryse wasn't looking. Jocelyn could hardly keep a straight face). I'm so excited to actually go further in depth and see how it all came together, too, even if I already know the base outline of how everything changed and how they all came to be who they are in Fading.**

* * *

 **Drop me a review?**


	3. Almost Victory

**New chapter! Yay! Updates for most/all stories will be coming much more frequently now that school is almost done and I have no more exams to study for.**

 **Whatever. Most of you just came here to read the story. That's cool.**

 **So, onward my wayward children!**

 **(Side note: _Womanizer_ by _Britney Spears_ may or may not be the chapter song?)**

* * *

"Okay, we have a minor, teensy, weensy problem," Isabelle makes a face, clenching her teeth and squinting her eyes a little as she holds up her hand. There's a small space between her pointer finger and thumb. I guess that's how "teensy, weensy" this problem is. Though somehow, I don't believe that dark-haired girl standing in front of me.

She paces the length of her bedroom, turning to look at me from the where she stands in front of her impressively large window. "Okay, so first, he wasn't really my cousin. He's a family friend or something…But that doesn't matter—so, according to my Maryse, he got kicked out of his foster home…?"

I stare at my friend, my eyes surely as wide as saucers. Just pair those saucer-like eyes with my too-pale skin and horribly frizzy bright red hair, and you must have quite the sight to behold.

"Kicked out?" I repeat slowly, tasting the words on my tongue. I don't like the way they feel, how they fall from my lips.

"Yes!" Isabelle cries, raising both hands in the air dramatically before letting them fall, slicing impossibly fast through the air. "And that may kind of mean that—"

"That my date is cancelled?" I finish for her, my tone dry and bored. I didn't even know the guy, why should it matter to me? Besides, the last time I let Iz set me up on a blind date, the guy didn't even show, and I had to find out later that night that the guy had been arrested—turned out Izzy had met him at a club that I'm not even sure how she got in (she still won't tell me), considering they card everyone that attempts to pass through the front doors.

"Yes—wait, no! I can find you another one! Who do you want? I can get any guy on the football team, soccer team—hell, I can even get one of those nerdy guys that hang out in the library all the time! The AV guys?!" She's rambling, which is never a good sign. When she gets nervous, Izzy tends to babble, when she's stressed, she rants—about everything.

"Iz, how many times do I have to tell you that I just don't believe in high school romance? It's usually superficial and doesn't last. But then again, I've been watching too many teen dramas on Netflix." At this point, I'm more talking to myself than I am to her. Though I don't think Izzy notices, either that or she simply doesn't care, I realize as I slowly allow my lips to fall shut, chewing on the bottom one.

"If you're set on being stubborn, then fine," Isabelle says decidedly, running her fingers through her hair. Unlike this tangled mop of mine that I can rarely be bothered to brush, hers is sleek and knotless down her back. "We'll just do something instead. Besides, he's a total loser."

"And you were still set me up with him?" I ask incredulously, my brows more than likely hiding in my hairline.

"Okay, he isn't a _total_ loser, but loser _enough_. Satisfied?"

"Such a terrible friend, isn't she?" Comes a drawling voice, smooth and lazy, from the doorway. I don't bother to sweep my eyes across the room to see who it is—I already know. There's only one other person currently in the house besides the two of us.

And it isn't Brendon Urie.

"She can't be much worse than you," I reply just as lazily, though I somehow doubt it came out half as smooth.

Shooting me a half bored, half sort of chastising look, Jace continues, "Setting you up with losers when there's a perfectly fine specimen—and _single_ —"—he winks at me, and I could swear that just a bat of those incredibly long, golden lashes could set the tides—"living just down the hall from her." This time, it's Izzy who's on the receiving end of his chastising look.

Isabelle ignores his look, snorting and tossing her head back as if to laugh. "She can't even be bothered to go out with the guys _I_ set her up with, and you think she'd even make the fractional effort to go out with _you_?"

"Adorable, isn't he?" I glance over at Isabelle, unable to help the toothy grin that makes its way across my face.

Jace makes a noise of indignation from where he stands, and I think he might stomp his foot on the ground, too for a moment before he strides into the center of the black-painted room, flopping onto the bed beside me a breath later. I watch as Isabelle's eyes go deadly wide, and feel any and every word die on my lips as my breathing stops altogether.

 _What are you_ doing _?!_ I want to scream at Jace, but I feel completely paralyzed. I can feel the rise and fall of Jace's chest against my back, feel his warm breath tickling the back of my neck, disturbing the hair there. I swear I can hear his heart beating in the sudden quiet before he lets out a breathy chuckle.

"That," Jace says against the shell of my ear before rolling away (to my utmost pleasure) off the bed and directly onto the floor, "was adorable."

I don't think I've ever hit someone so hard with a pillow in my life.

* * *

I've been up for hours at this point, and sleep is beginning to seem like an oasis…a concept so foreign it can't be real. Then again, that's probably just the sleep deprivation talking—it likes to do that when I've been up for nearly eighteen consecutive hours.

I can remember very well, very easily the feel of my face pressed into my pillows, the feel of the blanket s pulled up and tucked in under my chin…

I shake my head—that is wholly irrelevant; I have more important things to do right now. For one, get started on this English paper that's basically my whole grade for the second semester. And yet, despite that fact, I'm still staring at an empty document, my cursor flashing madly, tauntingly at me.

Sighing, I glance slowly away from my laptop screen, officially declaring 3: 02 a.m. my "give-up" time. Sort of like time of death, but not quite so morbid, or sad, or—I clearly need some sleep.

Not that I get any, because when I sneak downstairs to the kitchen for a midnight snack and smack heads with Jon—him cursing a little loudly and me hissing in pain while attempting to stomp semi-angrily, semi-tiredly on his foot despite not being able to see in the utter darkness of the living room—we do some incredibly stupid things.

The first of which, is trying to make pancakes with only the light from that light above the stove (only to burn them and splatter the pancake mix everywhere) to help guide our ministrations.

The second incredibly stupid thing we decide to do in hissed, tired, slightly angry whispers, is to run back upstairs to our rooms, change as fast as possible while also making as little noise as possible, and then heading out to McDonald's, because it's twenty-four hours and we seem to have bottomless pits for stomachs.

In my hurry to pull a pair of pants on, my phone buzzes on my bed and I stumble over piles of _things_ in the darkness, hoping to get to it before one or both of my snoring parents hears it. The screen is lit up by a new text message from Simon, and I can't help but feel a small pang and am debating begging Jon to pick him up on our way to McDonalds when my brother himself bursts quietly, albeit a little clumsily through my door.

"Come on, Sissy. I got the keys—we gotta go now, because I tripped over something in mom and dad's room and I don't want to be here if and when they wake up."

"Okay, I'm coming, I'm coming," I reply a little breathlessly, securing my phone in my back pocket and hesitating between grabbing a sweater off of the pile on my floor or not.

I barely have time the grasp the fabric of my sweater between my thin, freckly fingers before Jon is back in my room, all but tugging me hurriedly and as quietly as possible down the stairs.

* * *

The silence is overwhelming.

The only sound is the passing of surely speeding cars and the clicking noise from the turn-signal Jon puts on every now and again.

"That's it," I say, more to myself than to the white-haired boy sitting next to me. I click on the radio and press one of the buttons beneath it to select my personal favourite radio station. Jon groans beside me, tipping his head back and knocking it on his headrest, though I think I can see the faintest ghost of a smile upon his ashen lips when a Britney Spears song begins leaking from the speakers.

And in the dim light of streetlights overhead, I can see my brother's lips moving.

I giggle a little bit, feeling slightly breathless, as if having all the wind whipping in from the open car windows has left me winded.

 _Superstar_

 _Where you from, how's it going?_

 _I know you_

 _Gotta clue, what you're doing?_

 _You can play brand new to all the other chicks out here_

 _But I know what you are, what you are, baby_

The words seem to come just as easily as breathing to Jon, while I'm stuck attempting to sing along, not knowing what's coming next.

 _Look at you_

 _Gettin' more than just re-up_

 _Baby, you_

 _Got all the puppets with their strings up_

 _Faking like a good one, but I call 'em like I see 'em_

 _I know what you are, what you are, baby_

" _Womanizer_!" Jon signs at the top of his lungs, though it's much more like yelling than it is singing. " _Woman, Womanizer_!"

By the time Jon pulls into the McDonald's parking lot, I've nearly caught on to the chorus of the song, singing as loudly and as horribly as my brother. It is only when a few passerby give us odd looks that I realize with a vicious blush and stuttering heartbeat that the windows have been open this _entire time_.

Though not even the blush that lights Jon's pale face stops him of singing:

 _Womanizer, Woman, Womanizer_

 _You're a Womanizer, oh Womanizer oh_

 _You're a Womanizer, baby_

 _You you you are, You you you are_

 _Womanizer, Womanizer, Womanizer_

And I can't help but sing along with him, ignoring the slightly frightened looks of the pedestrians that have the unfortunate luck to pass by our car.

* * *

"Babe!" A voice calls as I stand next to Jon, waiting for the lazy crew working the late shift to actually make our order. The restaurant is void of customers save for me and the white-haired boy moon-walking across the dirtied tile floor repeatedly, humming the tune to _Fergalicious_ , and I still don't look back at the voice, thinking it might be a mistake when the voice shouts again, this time much louder and more demanding than before: " _LOSER_!"

I spin around and Jon halts his sort of flawless moon-walking for a moment before deciding to focus on that again instead of interacting with the bouncing-on-her-heels obsidian-eyed girl and her broody-looking blond-haired partner, with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his leather jacket.

"What—why are you here?" I furrow my brows, frowning as I head over to her.

"I think the better question is why you and your brother were singing _Womanizer_ at the top of your lungs in a McDonald's parking lot at three in the morning," Izzy says, her groomed black brow arched effortlessly and a hand on her jutted-out hip.

Jace snorts quietly at his sister's words.

"It's our victory anthem," Jon says proudly as he slings his arm lazily over my shoulders—though I swear I'm picking up a hint of protectiveness coiled in his body.

"Victory anthem?" Jace raises a tawny eyebrow at my brother. "What did you win? The award for loudest morons in the parking lot?"

"No"—Jonathan interrupts smoothly—"victory anthem for successfully sneaking out at this most ungodly of hours."

Again, Jace arches his brow at Jon and I feel utterly compelled to say, "What is with all the eyebrow raising? Hmm? Did I just get stuck in the middle of some sort of a testosterone fight?"

My brother, ever the epitome of class and grace, snorts obnoxiously. "You say that as if there's anyone here to have a testosterone fight _with_ , Sissy."

" _Oh, damn_ ," Isabelle snaps her fingers, earning a strange look from the three of us. "What?" She asks, dividing her gaze between Jace, Jon, and myself. "Too Kardashian?"

"Maybe just a little bit," I tell her quietly as Jace and Jon have stare intensely at each other, their eyes narrowed to vicious-looking slits, Jon's too-long hair falling into his eyes, Jace's mouth becoming but a thin line of a pinkish-red colour across his face.

"Iz, do you want to, I don't know—go be anywhere else but here?" I ask her, gesturing vaguely with my hand to the other side of the restaurant lined with red, white and yellow booths.

My best friend nods eagerly, her dark eyes wide as she trails beside me. After a second she pauses, nearly stumbling over her feet—the most ungraceful thing I think I've ever seen Isabelle do. "Wait—it's probably _so_ not a good idea to leave them there alone."

"I'm sure they both have at least some semblance of common sense, even if it doesn't seem like that, Iz. They'll be fine." Regardless, the two of us spin on our heels, and I have to admit, I almost expected to find Jon holding Jace by the throat as he slammed him repeatedly against McDonalds' grimy walls.

But instead, I find Jon now waiting by our tray at the counter, Jace leaning against the window by the door, grumbling under his breath.

I have to turn my head away, chuckling into my hand at the sight of the black still staining his hairline and the singed tips of his hair, feeling blood flood my cheeks as Izzy and I continue on to one of the tables near the back of the restaurant—by the windows. The view out of them is a little ruined by the dirty handprints streaked down them, but otherwise, the image of the pitch-black parking lot for the most part void of cars is intact.

* * *

"You never did answer my question," I tell Isabelle, munching on a fry. The saltiness of it almost makes me want to spit out the delicious delicacy. Almost.

She takes a greedy slurp of my strawberry milkshake, shaking her head a little—this is the point in time when I notice my brother staring intensely at her from beside me and Jace's glare weighing heavily down upon him from beside Izzy—before saying, albeit through a mouthful of milkshake: "Rich parents, money to blow, things to rebel against, yada yada yada. Besides, mom and dad are out of town and since they're too cheap to hire some live-in maid to 'watch over us' and they don't have Alec"—Jace shifts in his seat at the mention of his adoptive-brother, going fairly still as his sister continues on a little uncomfortably—"anymore, we're left to the supervision of a home security system."

"What fun," I muse dryly, using a fry to push a straw wrapper around the tray of empty food containers. I got all of one and a half of my chicken nuggets before Izzy and Jace robbed me blind. Why am I even friends with this girl?

Jon glances out the window and down at his phone screen. "Shit—well, Sissy, I think it's time we get home. Mom will be leaving for the gallery in about…an hour."

I feel my eyes go much wider than normal, much wider than I knew they could. "An _hour_? You're kidding me, Jonathan. _Tell me_ you're kidding, because if not we're screwed unless there's absolutely no traffic. And this is New York—so that's not going to happen."

Jace chuckles under his breath, something he doesn't even try to hide. "You're totally screwed. Both of you."

My brother turns to snap at Jace, but I do it before he has the chance to draw a breath. "Shut up, would you? The only thing your nails-on-a-chalkboard-voice is good for is drowning out any viable excuses that might get us out of this mess!" The golden-haired boy seems a little off-put by my outburst, though I don't really know why. It isn't as though I've never snapped at him before.

Izzy hisses something under her breath at Jace before waving animatedly and half shouting across the restaurant, "Bye, babe! Good luck!"

If only getting out of this mess would be as easy as Isabelle's forced smile as she scolds her brother.

* * *

Jon and I try our best to be quiet as we enter the house, and I silently pray that the door doesn't creek; it does.

Even worse? Standing not ten feet away, her arms crossed over her chest and that "scary-calm" look upon her delicate features is my mother. I have a feeling I'm about to regret that craving for a strawberry milkshake very soon.

* * *

 **I really loved this chapter, especially Jon. You're lying to yourself if you say you don't love Jon.**

 **Firstly, thank you to all who left me lovely reviews.**

 **Secondly, ONWARDS TO LES REVIEWS.**

 **eleonorejune: I'm glad you can relate. I didn't want this one to uber heavy like Fading (if you've read it), just because they're still kids, really. Young and stupid (not to say they aren't stupid as adults, but). And idk, I really like writing it. :)) (I'm going to be writing so much banter your heart will explode, k.)**

 **Shauna Kullden: I think besides this chapter, that was my favourite part so far in the entire story. I promise you that it took Jace plenty of time to get off the black from the explosion. Not that he even got it all off.**

 **Yumna: Every time I write a chapter for Paradox I'm just laughing because they don't get along great and Jace (at this point in time, anyways) would vow up and down that he does not like Clary, that he would rather be single for the rest of his life than date her, but...there's something there. It's tiny, but it's there. After all, all it takes is one spark to start a forest fire.**

 **I'm A Writing Dreamer: It makes me so happy that Fading got such a positive response and that I actually have people that would be interested in reading about Clary and Jace's life before they got to the point they're at in Fading. :)) I don't even know exactly what is going to happen beyond the next chapter or so (I mean, I know from a certain point to another, but) I'm very excited to see what events take place in their lives that will help shape them into the characters we know. Jace is definitely a smart boy, he does things for certain reasons, but I don't think even he entirely knows the explanation behind that smile. (Okay, I totally know, I'm just keeping it hush hush.)**

* * *

 **Drop me a review?**


	4. I Kissed A Girl

**Ooooh I'm so excited about this chapter! I've spent so long perfecting it - so if it has any spelling errors I'm tossing my laptop out the window.**

 **Also, I threw together a playlist for this chapter (because it's special - _very_ special):**

 **- _Without Me_ by _Eminem_**

 **- _I Kissed A Girl_ by _Katy Perry_**

 **- _My House_ by _Flo Rida_**

 **- _S &M_ by _Rihanna_**

 **- _GDFR_ by _Flo Rida_**

 ** _-Let It Rock_ by _Kevin Rudolf_**

 **- _Low_ by _Flo Rida_**

* * *

Grounded.

What am I going to tell Izzy? And Simon? This is the first time he's actually excited to go to a party with us. I can't just bail on them. But what else can I do?

Nothing. I can do nothing. I can't even sneak out one of my windows because the drop is too high, too much of a risk for someone that weighs about as much as a ten-year-old and has the legs of an elf—and not those tall, majestic hot ones; the short ones with pointy little ears and pointier hats.

My mom, maybe five feet and four inches off the ground, with that somehow darkened "scary-calm" look scrawled across her features so similar to my own, had had Jon, who likes to pretend that he's grown-up and mature and a total macho-man, refusing to meet her piercing look. Somehow it had made me want to smile.

I open up my laptop, pulling up Skype and listening to the odd ring it does when you call someone. Izzy answers after the second ring.

"Hey babe!" She grins, pulling her wet hair away from her face—a white-green colour from the face mask—and sweeping it up into a high ponytail.

"Hey," I reply with much less excitement riddling my tone. I stare down at my finger as it traces around the keys on my keyboard. She's going to _hate_ me.

"What?" She asks, sitting down in front of her own computer. As she picks up a pair of tweezers I absently notice the sparkly dark blue shade of polish she's painted her nails. How long has she already spent getting ready for this party? "Tell me what's wrong Clare."

"So…I may be kinda grounded."

Isabelle groans, throwing her head back. "Don't play with me Clarissa, today is not the day for this bull."

"Iz, if I was kidding I would have given myself away already." For whatever reason, I can't lie to Isabelle, and it irks me like you would not believe. Just a pinning look from her has my lie coming unravelled and spilling out of my mouth as if I were doing a spit take.

"I hate when you're right," she inhales deeply, exhaling just as loudly. "Well, could you, like…climb out your window?"

I almost laugh. "Iz, my bedroom is on the second floor—and besides, what would I climb down? The siding?"

She's quiet for a minute, a contemplative look pasted on her features. Abruptly, she snaps her head back up, her eyes wide and glinting in the sun streaming in through the window before her desk. "Be ready for ten-thirty, I have an idea." And she hangs up, leaving me to stare at my laptop screen dumbly. Izzy has an idea.

 _Izzy has an idea_.

Oh my god, this is going to be crazy and probably not work but it's going to be absolutely brilliant. I can't wait to see what she has in store—even if I'll get caught trying to sneak out.

* * *

By the time ten-thirty rolls around, I'm debating sweeping on another coat of mascara and admiring my outfit in the mirror hanging over my dresser. I'm especially proud of the outfit I've pulled together, even if it's something my dad might try to never let me out of the house again if he saw me in it—built from a tight-fitting black cut out crop top, a pair of ripped blue skinny jeans that were a gift from Izzy and do amazing things for my legs, and my trusty white converse.

My phone buzzes somewhere on my bed, and I leap towards it, landing with an _oomph_ on my stomach. _Open your window_.

I shake my head at my phone, my freshly curled hair bouncing with the action. Open my window? What am I going to do? Fly out of it?

But I do it, against my better judgement. Even if Jon is in his room watching Friends again and my parents are asleep down the hall, I'm afraid I'll get caught. I glance around outside, but its dark and all I can hear is the sound of crickets and trees rustling.

I swear I can hear his eye roll before he even speaks. "Down here, Gingerbread."

Sure enough, there he is, looking up at me in the darkness. Jace.

"Okay, well that's great," I slap my hands down on my windowsill, "But how am I supposed to get out?"

"Have a little faith, will you?"

"Sure, just not in you."

Jace rolls his eyes again, his aureate eyes glowing oddly in the dim light emanating from my bedroom. "Climb down the roof, and jump the rest of the way; I'll catch you."

I fight not to gape at the absurdity, failing—I sit out on the slightly slanted roof sometimes, but it's too high up to jump off of. Sure, Jace is strong, but will the impact of me landing in his arms jar him enough to drop me? Will he even _catch_ me?

Before I even realize I'm doing it, I'm shaking my head. "No—no way—it's too high up, Jace."

"Come on, Clary—you weigh like ninety pounds, I think I can catch you."

 _A hundred-and-two pounds, thank you very much_.

I grumble under my breath as I reach over to switch off my lamp, slipping my phone into my pocket. I can do this. I mean, I've sat out there before, how much different would jumping be? My stomach erupts into butterflies at the thought, my nerves thoroughly tangling themselves together.

"It's okay, Clary," Jace sighs far below, and I can almost imagine him perching his hand on a jutted out hip. I snicker at the idea, forcing myself further on the roof. I don't know how I've done it, managed it, but I find myself on my hands and knees, looking down into the abyss-like darkness, ready to swallow me the moment I take the plunge.

"Okay, good," the blond boy encourages me from the ground, "Now all you have to do is jump."

Taking a deep breath, I squeeze my eyes shut and attempt to mentally prepare myself for this. My brain is kicking and screaming—yelling that this is possibly the worst idea either Jace or me have ever had.

Jace for suggesting I jump off a roof and trust in the notion that he'll catch me.

And me for agreeing to it.

I can do this, _I can do this_. It's just a matter of pushing myself off the ledge I'm currently sat on—having shifted so that I'm no longer on my hands and knees, I'm sitting on the edge of the roof, feeling like I'm secure one second and then like I'm going to accidentally teeter off the next.

"You're doing good, Clary—just jump."

So I do—I jump, my grip on the edge of the roof helping me to push off.

It's like I'm going down the steep, highly anticipated drop on a rollercoaster—but without the security of a bar keeping me strapped in and every other safety precaution.

I'm free falling through the air, my hair whipping up above my head and hoping, praying that Jace catches me. Even worse, maybe, than the fear that Jace won't catch me, is the sense of panic flooding through me, is my breath catching in my throat and my stomach completely bottoming-out. I don't even have half a mind to scream when I land.

And it's not on cold, packed dirt, either.

To my utter surprise—and complete ecstatic-ness—I'm pressed up against something warm, and, still not completely breathing, I look up to gold eyes staring back down at me.

When he asks me if I'm alright, I swear to god something like worry flickers in those mesmerizing eyes. By the time I realize I'm staring and haven't opened my mouth to even _attempt_ to answer him, my cheeks have already heated and I'm trying to look anywhere but at him as I mutter, "I'm fine."

It doesn't really help, either, when I realize that Jace is still holding onto me, and I'm still holding tightly to him.

"You can put me down now Jace, I'm okay."

"Oh, right," Jace clears his throat and sets me gently down on the ground—and I don't know why I'm mildly surprised by that gentleness; what was I expecting him to do? Just drop me?

"Where's Izzy? You didn't walk, did you?" I peer around, but it's not only hopeless, but pointless in the dark.

Jace almost snorts, nodding his head to the end of my driveway. "We parked down the street, shut the car off—and you really think Isabelle would walk in the shoes she wore?" He shakes his head, laughing to himself.

I roll my eyes, despite wanting to laugh myself. I grab Jace's hand (which seems to shake him, because for a second he's frozen) and begin to tug him away from my house before we draw Jon's attention—or infinitely worse, wake up my parents.

"Well," I give Jace a pointed look—though I'm not sure how well he can actually see it—and expectantly tell him, "Let's go!"

* * *

"Oh my god, you actually did it!" Izzy squeals, hugging so tightly I can hardly draw in breath. "I can't believe it _worked_!" Releasing me, she turns her attention to Jace who looks like he's trying just a little too hard to look uninterested. Without warning, the dark-haired girl pulls Jace to her, swaying them back and forth as she hugs him. "Thankyouthankyouthankyou!"

"Are you telling me you let me jump off of a roof, unsure if your blond, bonehead of a brother would actually catch me?!" I'm nearly screeching, but at the moment I don't particularly care if I wake up all of my neighbors or the entirety of Westchester.

She makes a face that kind of looks like a cringe and a grimace. "Yes…?"

I raise my hands up and drop them back to my sides, the slap of my hands against my thighs resonating, even with the sounds of passing cars and just people in general. "I can't believe you! You know what, just start the car and let's go get Simon."

I'm furious and I don't think even Jace will dare open his non-stop mouth.

* * *

I was wrong. He does open his non-stop mouth—as we slow to a stop at a red light.

Of all things he could say, he makes the corniest joke: Looking back at me from the front seat, he grins and goes, "I think you _fell_ for me, Clary." And it's so corny, lord help me, I'm torn between bursting out in laughter and whacking him atop his pretty boy head.

But I don't have to choose, because—thank everything—we pull up at the curb in front of Simon's house. He comes bounding out the front door, practically bouncing each step. I know he's been waiting for this night and I'm excited that for once he _wants_ to go with us.

"Aye!" I beam at him through the open car window as he pulls open the door, sliding in a little awkwardly beside me. "You look nice, Si," I tell him—because he really does; he's wearing a white t-shirt and new-looking jeans. And his hair is neat as I think I've seen it since our eighth-grade graduation.

"Still looks like a rat to me," Jace crosses his arms over his chest, this _look_ on his face as he leans back in his seat. He looks quite satisfied with himself.

"Hey," I say, leaning forward on the center console between Jace and Izzy's seats, "Here's an idea: _keep your opinions to yourself_."

"Or you know," Isabelle adds, merging back into traffic. "You could just _shut up_."

"Okay, well how 'bout we turn on the radio? Hmm?" Si reaches between Izzy and Jace, turning up the volume.

Sound floods the car, and it takes me a minute to recognize the begging beats of _I Kissed a Girl_.

"Oh, oh, oh!" Izzy gets excited enough that I'm afraid for a second she'll accidentally swerve into the other lane.

" _This was never the way I planned_ ," Izzy, Simon and I sing in unison.

"Dorks," Jace mutters.

" _Not my intention_ ," I sing, making a point to be really loud, even if I'm just trying to annoy Jace.

 _I got so brave, drink in hand  
Lost my discretion  
It's not what, I'm used to  
Just wanna try you on  
I'm curious for you  
Caught my attention_

And then the chorus comes along, and Jace starts singing.

I'm so, just…awe-struck I stumble on the words and have to stop and shake my head[K1] .

 _I kissed a girl and I liked it  
The taste of her cherry chap stick  
I kissed a girl just to try it  
I hope my boyfriend don't mind it  
It felt so wrong  
It felt so right  
Don't mean I'm in love tonight  
I kissed a girl and I liked it  
I liked it_

I try to sing along to the rest of the song with Izzy and Simon—but Jace is singing, too, and I'm just so distracted by the sounds coming out of his mouth.

When the song ends and an ad for Fern's Tree Removal comes on, Si leans over and whispers quietly enough in my ear that I'm sure Jace can't possibly hear, "Herondale can sing. Who knew?"

 _Yeah_ , I think, _who knew_.

* * *

It's a house party, and the house is overflowing with people—some of which look either too old or too young to be at a high school party. Solo cups liter the yard along with crepe paper, empty beer bottles, and people. It's something straight out of a movie, and I almost find myself laughing. How often does that happen?

There's music playing somewhere in the house but I can't tell what song, and the bass is turned up so loud that walking up the lawn I feel the vibrations. Izzy squeals in anticipation and moves like she's going to hug Simon from behind, but thinks better of it and turns to me instead.

"We'll stay 'till one, at the latest, because we need to get Clary home before anyone realizes she's gone." Si nods along with me, while Jace just seems to be ignoring the three of us all together. "Jace!" Izzy snaps, "Did you hear me?!"

"Jesus Christ— _yes_ , I heard you Isabelle. It's hard not to with you screaming in my fucking [K2] ear." Looking more than irritated, he detaches himself from our group and with a few angry-looking, long-legged strides, he disappears inside the house. I have a feeling I won't be seeing much more of him tonight—not that it particularly matters, because I have Izzy and Si, and that is all that matters.

"Who's ready to party?" Izzy grins, reaching out to grab Si's hand and mine, dragging us through the narrow doorway, causing me to bump roughly against Simon and him against me. I have to turn my head away to laugh when, as he's fixing his glasses and adjusting his shirt, Si turns brighter than my hair. Izzy starts to fade into the crowd before she whips around, very narrowly avoiding hitting some bearded guy with her long, sleek ponytail. "Oh, _do not_ drink anything unless you want to be hung over until Christmas."

* * *

An hour later, or maybe it's only been twenty minutes, me and Si are perched awkwardly on one of many leather couches throughout the house, his fingers between mine and squeezing my hand. He thinks he's going to win.

That boy has another thing coming.

Muscles taut, my arm shaking, I push Simon's hand on the couch. That's the second arm wrestle I've won against him in the last five minutes.

"Ha! Ha-ha!" I fall back on the arm rest of the couch, feeling my already-cropped shirt ride further up my pale, freckly—and kind of cold—stomach. "I win!"

"Again," Si grumbles, but he's smiling, too.

"Come on, get up," I sit up, moving fluidly to my feet and grabbing his hands, pulling him up. "Let's dance, this is a good song." Not that I know which one it is, just that the bass is cranked so high I feel like I'm vibrating and people are trying to sing as they dance, solo cups sloshing liquid.

"At your service," Si mock bows—or at least, he attempts to but I give his arm a tug before he's all the way bowed and he almost falls into a dancing group of girls. I think a blonde one swats at his head but misses. There's so much going on around me, so much laughter floating around the room, pulsing, and it's like everyone here kind of just forgot how much they usually despise one another at school.

Izzy finds us somehow, shoving and elbowing her way through the throng. Little strands of her hair are sticking out crazily, and her eyes are bright like shimmering onyx, and there's a clumsy smile on her lips when she spots us.

I don't think she says anything, really, she only lures Simon further into the crowd, and I wonder if she's finally going to do it—if she's finally going to kiss him and hold him and tell him how long she's loved him. But I doubt it.

I lift my arms above my head like I saw a few other people do, and try to sway my hips—which, admittedly, is harder than it looks, and honestly it hurts when I push too much. Like my hip is popping out. It's probably because they're so bony.

"Welcome to my house!" I sing loud and off key, and either the song finishes, or we have one hell of an indecisive DJ, because I hear the unmistakable sounds of Rihanna pounding through the speakers, a fresh wave of exhilaration flooding through me, flushing my cheeks red and my swaying movements becoming easier, my hips not feeling like they're popping out so much.

 _Dance with me_ , an intoxicating voice at my ear, hot breath on my neck, the burning smell of liquor in my nose. Hair sticks to the sides of my face, my forehead, the back of my neck, and my throat is dry and I ache for a drink, remembering Isabelle's words.

Do not _drink anything unless you want to be hung over until Christmas._

Someone's arms are slung lowly around my waist; their hands knotted together just bellow my navel, their hot skin burning against my stomach. In the darkness and with all the noise, I can't pick out whose voice it is, I can't remember if I remember the cologne I smell. Everything seems familiar, but not really. Like the song—Rihanna, I'm sure, but which one? The bass is vibrating up through the soles of my shoes, rattling my brain around in my skull and I grin what I'm sure is the same crooked, sloppy grin Isabelle grinned at Simon.

When the song switches again, I spin in the arms that hold me. A pang of fear shoots through me, quick and fierce, what if it's some creepy old guy? What if they shove a chloroform cloth over my mouth and nose and drag me off into the back of their van?

Neither of those things happen though, but it's just as surprising when I spin around and find myself encased—dopily happy, I might add—in Jace's arms.

"There you are," I smile up at him, slinging my arms over his shoulders, knotting my hands behind his neck like his are knotted around my waist. "I think Isabelle went looking for you." The worst part of this whole thing, though? The butterflies in my stomach are going berserk, flapping up into my ribcage, and a little, bubbly, girlish giggle escapes my lips—and before I know how to make myself stop, I'm on my tip-toes, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth and trying to slip away from him.

He holds on to me for a second, his golden eyes dilated, engulfed by the black of his pupils, and he's staring at me like I'm not the girl he's made it his personal mission to annoy since the day we met; like I'm not scrawny little Clary with the fireball hair.

And then he lets me go, and I make it _my_ mission to melt into the crowd to avoid him until Isabelle drags me out by my now-ruined hair. I'm fully expecting to have to face him and our really, really weird-awkward moment when we settle into the car, but we wait and he doesn't come, and Izzy says he's not answering his phone, and Simon says his calls are going straight to voicemail. I don't offer to call him, because with my luck, he'll answer and _then_ what will I say? _Um, hey Jace, I get you're probably just as weirded out by that little moment as I am, but can you, like, I don't know, come to the car so we can leave before I get busted for literally jumping out my window to go to a party? Pretty please?_ I don't think that would work. Actually, I think he'd snort at the pretty please and hang up on me.

Not that I'd care.

* * *

 **I'M SCREAMING. CAN YOU GUYS GUESS WHAT'S GONNA HAPPEN NEXT CHAPTER? NO? WELL I'M NOT GIVING HINTS.**

 **Onto les reviews.**

 **oesteffel: First of all, let's just all understand how sweet you are, okay? Secondly, I know, I LOVE SASSY JACE, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, MOON-WALKING JON. But yeah, thank god for McDonald's and (in my case) Tim Hortons, even if I don't have a car to bring me to these places at 3am when I'm suddenly starving and wanting something salty.**

 **I'm A Writing Dreamer: Torturing, obviously. What other option _is_ there? I leave so many chapters on cliff-hangers, I don't know how you guys don't all hate me. But Jon is my favourite thing. I love him so much, I don't think anyone actually understands how much writing him makes me laugh. **

**Page1of365: I love writing this cast as teens, like they're all similar to who they come out to be by the end of Fading, but there are so many things to come that shape them into adults and the people who they'll be the rest of their lives. It's just really fun to be the puppet-master of all this.**

 **Allieanna: Oh god, my condolences. My mom can be pretty scary when I don't clean my room - I can't imagine what it would be like getting caught sneaking into my house.**

 **Yumna98: I really like that theory. I mean it's probably true (I can't say, though, because I've never been in love, obviously), but I don't think Jace ever stopped loving her, he just...forgot to show it, I guess. All of this will be explained a lot more in the next book/fanfic.**

 **BlueberryOmlet: Thank you so much!**

 **Ads S: (Saving the best for last, ahaha.)**

 **UGH THE BEGINNING OF JON/JACE FEUD IS GOING TO BE THE MOST SPECTACULAR EVOLUTION EVER. I ALREADY KNOW WHEN IT STARTS. Pre-wedding mess Clace is probably the best Clace. Actually, no, teenage Clace is the best because wAIT UNTIL NEXT CHAPTER I NEED TO GO WRITE IT, UH-BUH-BYE.**


	5. Stutter

**Hey! Bet a lot of you want to smite me where I stand! Sorry about that!**

 **I have good excuses, trust me: 1) Exams, new classes, friend drama that makes me wish I could just grab my one friend by the hair and shake him until everything the rest of us have been saying gets through his seemingly thick skull to him 2) I got a job! Yay! 3) Just really haven't felt like writing, even though I've tried forcing myself.**

 **Anyways, I've come to find I always like writing chapters for this story - I can have so much fun with Clary and Simon and Izzy and Jace. (And I can make Jon moon walk and sing with Clary and sob to sad movies, so...)**

 **Also! Songs in this chapter:**

 **\- Thrift Shop by Macklemore**

 **\- Without Me by Eminem**

 **\- Mambo No. 5 by Lou Bega**

* * *

The next day I'm filled with this feeling like I'm floating on a high without fear of falling down. The weather has suddenly gotten colder, and there's a bounce in my step, and my Mom eyes me suspiciously as I butter my toast, moving my hips side to side and humming the tune to _Your Woman_ by _White Town_ , which my dad thinks is one of the songs from Star Wars. But it's not, I tell him, frowning down at my toast as the margarine-slathered knife crosses back and forth over it.

Oh, and did I mention the fact that I snuck back into the house successfully last night without even Jon hearing me? But, to be fair, I could hear him sobbing to _Marley & Me_, so I think he was a little distracted.

Today is going to be a good day—starting with my smooth and freshly-shaven legs (void of knicks or cuts!), and especially well-done eyebrows. Just as I shove half of the slightly burnt piece of toast into my mouth Jon goes, "Come on, let's go, I've got a group project to finish."

"What?!" I demand incredulously around my mouthful. "It's only _seven-thirty_!"

Mom scowls at him, "Jon, you should've finished this earlier—"

"Yeah, Mom, love you," he calls, already bouncing his way down the drive way.

I'm slipping on my shoes—a cute new pair of ankle boots that I'm debating whipping at the back of my brother's head—when Mom says, "Wear a jacket honey, its cold—do you really think a skirt is a good idea?" I sigh, but struggle to put my jacket on with one hand because the other one is holding my toast and I refuse to put my toast down.

"Hurry up or I'm leaving without you Sissy!"

"Love you!" I call, hurrying down the driveway as I can without rolling my ankle or breaking my neck in these boots. I think I hear Dad laughing behind me, but I pretend like I don't hear it and keep going, because nothing is going to ruin this day for me. Literally nothing. I got up early and flat ironed my hair (without burning it), and this outfit makes me feel amazing. I wasn't sure about it when Izzy helped me pick it out, but knee high socks just do things for a girl's confidence—and legs.

As soon as I slip into the car Jon cranks the radio and peels out of the driveway so fast I'm sure there's burn marks. But I don't bother looking and me and my brother start singing like idiots, even with all the windows down and the cold wind whipping my hair around like a bunch of red ribbons.

" _I'm gonna pop some tags, only got twenty dollars in my pocket_ _!_ _I - I - I'm hunting, looking for a come-up!_ "

And then Jon being Jon, screams (because why wouldn't he?), " _This is fucking awesome_!" Meanwhile I'm cackling so hard my head hits the windows, and that makes Jon laugh so much more he almost swerves into the other lane. I slap his arm but it's half-hearted and I'm too focused on singing along. Jon switches the song as we roll to a stop behind a long line of cars stopped at a red light.

"Really? You _had_ to switch it?"

He shrugs, "I got bored." I roll my eyes at him, but sing along with possibly more enthusiasm to _Without Me_ —except Jon sings the swears, and I don't.

…Which he mocks me for, but by the time Jon pulls the car into a narrow space we're both jamming to _Mambo No. 5_ and I'm laughing watching Jon try to dance and steer at the same time. We probably almost died about six times on the ten minutes drive to school, and I laughed each time.

Apparently I have absolutely no sense of self-preservation when it comes to driving with Jon.

" _Oooh_ , hottie alert!" Izzy bumps my hip with her leg and grins down at me. I bet if she wasn't wearing heels, we'd be almost the same height, but she's wearing a pair of tall boots paired with a pair of really cute high-waisted jeans, dwarfing me in size, and enabling her to look over the heads of nearly everyone.

I laugh, "I know, right?"

"Oh, hush, you look good. I told you that skirt would look good. And with those boots? Your legs look incredible; you're going to have guys falling over you left and right."

I shrug, looking both ways down the hallway for Si. "You seen Si today?"

She purses her lips, shaking her head after a moment's pause. "Nope. Not since last night. He must have had something pretty strong last night, because he actually _danced_ with me." Izzy seems astounded, and I have to agree; he was so outgoing last night, so just happy and burning with life.

"I think I must've too," I frown down at my shoes, thinking of Jace and his arms around me and the fact that I'd actually kissed him on the cheek. I remember faintly grabbing a drink from a punch bowl, stupid of me when I knew it was more than likely spiked.

"Why's that?" Izzy cocks her head at me curiously.

"Because I think I kissed your brother," I whisper in a low tone, just loud enough for her to hear, unsure if she even _did_ hear me.

And I'm only sure she did because not even a heartbeat later she's shouting "YOU KISSED MY BR—"

I slap my hand over her mouth, shushing her profusely. "Shut up! Shut up, Izzy! _Shhhhhh_!" I stamp my foot on the ground for emphasis, feeling eyes on me throughout.

Her dark eyes are wide and looking at me like she's never seen me before. "You're kidding, Clary."

"I'm not, first of all. Second of all, if you'd let me finish before you started screeching—I was going to tell you that I think I kissed him…on the _cheek_." I look away, awkward and blushing profusely. Izzy wasn't exactly my first choice to tell this to, but considering Si would freak like exponentially more than I think Izzy ever would, she seemed like the best option.

Now I'm doubting my choice.

"Still!" She moves her arms and hands around spastically, unable to express what I know she wants to scream at me verbally.

"God knows he's going to tease me about it," I groan, pressing the heel of my hand against my temple. Just imagining it gives me head pains. Head pains are something I could certainly do without before I'm doomed to head to homeroom just to have to see Jace. The thought makes something swirl in my stomach and crawl up into my chest. And I don't know how to feel about it.

Isabelle makes a dismissive gesture, "Oh, screw Jace—WAIT, NO DON'T DO THAT, SORRY." The bell rings and I turn to head in the opposite direction of Isabelle, but not before I see the redness that's slowly taking over her ivory complexion. I cackle wildly over my shoulder at my best friend, watching her raise her middle finger over her shoulder at me.

Somehow, that makes me laugh even harder.

* * *

I get to homeroom just as the tardy bell rings, but teacher isn't here yet, so I walk leisurely to my seat, leaning my bag against the leg of my desk and pulling out my phone. It chimes a new message from Simon: _Java Jones for lunch?_

I tap out my reply: _You have to ask? What about Iz?_

Simon: _Just got detention._

Me: _What for?_

Simon: _Caught on her phone. Speaking of which, gotta go ttyl_.

I chuckle quietly at that, and look up. Maybe it's Simon but now I'm paranoid I'm going to get detention for being on my phone. I mean it's not unlike Mr. Saunders. So I glance around, overly prepared to shove my phone under my butt if need be to hide it. But the only thing I find is Jace, staring at me. I feel my eyes go wide before he turns away quickly, whipping his head around so fast I grimace. That must have hurt, at least a little. He shifts in his seat and I do the same, running a hand through my hair, brushing back the front pieces because they keep falling in front of my eyes. Then I cross my legs, the right one resting on top of the left one and go back to my phone. It's well past nine-thirty when not-Mr. Saunders wanders in, looking confused. He's an old man with lenses so thick in his glasses his eyes are like two saucers, and his pants are pulled up to his waist, not to mention he's carrying a tattered old briefcase that looks like it's hanging on to its usability by a hair.

"I'm Mr. Cabello, this is room 351?" When a kid in the front row nods, he clears his throat and continues, "well your teacher is out at a conference, so…you can all work quietly on anything you'd like. It was rather last minute, so I'm not sure what his lesson plans were."

Mr. Cabello seats himself behind the old desk at the front of the room and sets to work on something, murmuring to himself while the class resumes whatever conversations it was they were having before he wandered in. I watch Jace. I don't know why, but there's something different today—

Then I realize that he's not participating in the conversation of the large group around him. He's not leaning so far forward to contribute his so-called words of wisdom to the conversation that his desk is almost falling forward. He's just…sitting there.

I can't remember if I've ever seen Jace sit so solemnly…So _alone_. And more over, I simply cannot recall a time when I've ever seen Jace not talk. He's always got something to say.

Maybe some girl bit his tongue last night while they were making out. If that was the case, I'd have to find and thank whoever she was. While he might be pleasing to the eyes, he is not so kind to the ears.

I reach down to my bag, digging around for my ear buds. Jon made me a playlist on Spotify, and I've been eager to listen to it, and a more perfect time couldn't have presented itself if it punched me in the face. So I plug in and set to work on a doodle I've been spending a few classes on. I'm not entirely sure what it is yet, but—

"H-have you done t-that math assignment y-yet?" I glance up, surprised I heard him through the loud music surely on the verge of bursting my eardrums. As soon as my eyes meet his, Jace looks away.

"Is that honestly what you came over here for? Because I know even you're not stupid enough to ask me for help with math." I raise my eyebrows at him and his weirdness, wondering if this was a dare or something. Am I about to get sprayed with something? Humiliated?

"Y-yeah. You're r-right," he smiles mockingly down at me as he stands up, but something about it is off. With that, he walks out the door and I think I'm the only one that notices.

* * *

"Why do you have two bags?" Simon asks me when we meet at the front doors before heading to Java Jones's.

"Um," I hold up Jace's gray backpack, wondering why I even bothered, "Jace's bag?"

"Jace's bag?" Simon asks incredulously, his eyes wider than Mr. Cabello's behind his glasses. "Why do you have _Jace's_ bag?"

"Well, he kind of just walked out of homeroom and left it there and none of his friends grabbed it so I thought…" _Thought I'd see Jace before Hell froze over and that I could hand off his unbelievably heavy bag to him, but surprisingly him and his big mouth are hard to find today_.

"You thought you'd be a good person and give it to him?" Simon sighs, and pushes his glasses up his nose.

"Well I'd hand it off to his sister, but seeing as how _she's_ stuck in detention, I'm stuck with _it_." I hold it at arm's length, barely able to keep my arm up its shaking so bad from holding up the weight of what I assume to be a few dozen text books and the entire country of Russia.

Simon slings his arm over my shoulder, leading us out the double doors to the parking lot. Man if only either of us could drive yet. "Let's hit the road, Fray."

I shove him lightly and, not expecting it, Simon topples over his own feet, and brings me down with him. So we sit there in a heap of bags and tangled limbs, staring at each other dumfounded before breaking out in laughter so profuse my stomach aches with the remnants.

* * *

Simon hands me a steaming Styrofoam cup. I bring it close to my nose and inhale greedily. Mom thinks I'm absolutely out of my mind drinking black coffee all the time, and every time I do Jon makes a cross with his fingers and backs away hissing like I'm the antichrist or something. One time he whacked his head on the kitchen cupboard doing it, though, and that was pretty funny.

"No sandwiches?" I raise my eyebrows expectantly at him.

Simon leans back into the patched-up leather couch and blows on his caramel-drizzle mocha. "Said they'll be out in a few minutes. Hungry?"

"Starving," I tell him with one hand over my lowly-growling stomach, "I only got to finish one piece of toast this morning before Jon threatened to leave without me."

"Nice," Si nods and I make a face at him, sticking my tongue out before taking a sip of my coffee. We sit in silence for a few minutes, and I'm thinking about Patch and Nora and how Crescendo's ending still has me in shreds and that the epilogue of Finale sucked really hard when I look up at Simon. And it hits me harder than when Jon took karate in the sixth grade and accidentally round-house kicked me in the gut—Simon has never seen an Adam Sandler movie.

"What? Did someone stick gum in my hair again?" He pats the side of his head, well actually it's more like slapping than it is patting. Like he's full-out slapping himself in the side of the head.

"Dude, stop—Si, stop slapping yourself," I lean forward and wrap my hand around his wrist before it can make contact with his head again, setting the appendage in his lap. "And no, there's no gum in your hair. I just had a realization."

"A _That's So Raven_ -level realization?

"Yes, I just realized that you've never seen an Adam Sandler movie and if that isn't a disgrace to the big spaghetti monster in the sky, I don't know what is." Simon looks a little surprised at the words, and I can't blame him. _Big spaghetti monster in the sky, Clary? What cranny did you pull that one out of?_

"That's what that look on your face was? You mean to tell me," he pauses, leaning forward and gesturing with his hand, coffee sloshing against the sides of his Styrofoam cup and dripping down it, onto his jeans. "That you looked like you'd just witnessed a man punched in the kneecaps by Channing Tatum, _because I've never seen an Adam Sandler movie_?"

"This is serious!" I slap his arm, but can't help but laugh. Good god, I don't know whether to pity anyone eavesdropping or consider them lucky. "Really…serious, Si," I'm wiping away tears finding their way down my face and straightening myself.

"Seems real serious by the way you're hunched over like Igor, laughing," Simon cocks an eyebrow at me. I level my gaze at him, determined not to laugh again, when I catch a glimpse of gold over his shoulder—and maybe it's stupid, but I do a double take.

Just because the universe hates me, it turns out to be exactly who I thought it was—and hoped it wasn't.

Jace. Of all places I thought I'd ever find him and his big mouth, Java Jones wasn't one of them.

"Si, can you just—" I trail off, getting slowly and a little unsurely to my feet, snatching Jace's impossibly heavy bag off the chair otherwise empty chair opposite me and Si. I make my way over to where he stands in line.

"You forgot this," I hold out the bag to him, feeling my arm tremble and preparing to snap in half from the weight.

Jace turns to me slowly, his eyes wide like he can't believe I'm here…at my favourite coffee shop. "W-what?" The line in front of him moves up, but he stands still, much to the annoyance of the man behind him.

"Your bag. You left your bag in homeroom."

"O-oh. Thanks…?" His voice picks up an octave or two at the end in question and he takes the bag from my hand, slinging it over his shoulder with ease—like it doesn't weigh as much as me after a dozen cheeseburgers. He rolls his shoulders, and looks away from me, meets my gaze, rolls his shoulders, laughs nervously—the high sound cracking in the middle—looks above me, looks behind himself, rolls his shoulders.

When he meets my gaze again, I realize that I haven't responded and that I've been…staring.

At him.

"You're welcome," I move my stare to my shoes, snapping my head back up after a second, walking away without really thinking about it, a little dazed.

Simon's staring at me from his spot on the worn couch, eyebrows sky-high and glasses sliding down his nose so I raise mine in return, shrugging like, _Well what was I_ supposed _to do?_

"What was that all about?" He asks, pivoting to face me as I fall into space beside him.

"I have no idea," I admit, glancing back at Jace, who seems to feel my eyes and meets them—and then looks away just as fast as he did in homeroom. I wonder if I maybe freaked him out last night, if maybe he feels awkward about it…

It doesn't really make sense, but I can't think of any other logical explanation because he didn't bring it up this morning when he had the chance to, didn't say anything to his friends, didn't tease me mercilessly about it.

I don't get it. I don't get him or his motives or know what crawled up his pants last night.

But I'm staring at him again and remembering how his skin all but burned under my lips.

* * *

 **Alright, so that might have been a sucky ending. Sorry 'bout that. If it was indeed sucky, just know that along with the epilogue to Fading, the last chapter of Fame is in the works, and they're both gonna make you cry. And my lips are sealed on whether it's happy crying or not. ;))**

 **I feel like I'm forgetting to mention something, so if I did, mention it in your review.**

 **Onto les reviews.**

 **WilliamTheGirl: I hope this chapter also made you exceedingly happy. :))**

 **Yumna98: They are all 16, they're 13-14 and going into high school up until the first line break in the very first chapter - sorry if that was confusing.**

 **Guest: A Jon and Jace feud is well on the way, trust me.**

 **I'm A Writing Dreamer: I KNOW AND I FEEL SO BAD FOR JON BUT I ALSO FEEL BAD FOR SIMON BC HE'S GONNA MESS UP THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN HIS LIFE EVENTUALLY.**

 **ASliverofSilverandGold: Winter cleaning is the bane of existence. I used to have a friend that was so OCD about that stuff too that she'd redecorate and clean her room every week and it was crazy. I swear she spent a thousand dollars on all the dollar store junk she bought to "spruce up her room". And I'm so glad the last chapter made you laugh! I hope this chapter was as funny :))**

 **Oesteffel: Don't worry, my sister thinks I'm a witch too, but my little brother seems to think I'm great (probably because he's three, though). Wow I wish I'd have had Jace throw her back in the window - that would have been funny, but I feel like Jace would have just thrown her into the siding. I don't think I actually specifically mentioned how Clary got back in in this chapter, but she just went through the front door. Really, really quietly. And I can't tell you why Jace wanted to dance with Clary, but - think of how their moment after he caught her last chapter ;)). And believe it or not, I've actually never watched Friends, I just hear my friends (get it?) singing the theme song sometimes and it gets stuck in my head.**


	6. Catalyst

**So ACOWAR comes out in like 21 days, and I'm yodeling at the top of my lungs with every day that passes and brings us closer to May 2nd.**

 **Anyways, I hope you like this chapter because the next chapter is already halfway done and I'm having so much fun writing it and it's gonna be great, okay. And there's gonna be an even greater playlist for next chapter. YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW.**

 **Okay, I'm done, go read the chapter. :))**

* * *

"Westchester Art Gallery, Clary speaking," I drone, staring at my nails and wondering how in the world I'm ever going to pick out the oil paint from under them.

Then from the other end, in a regal, grating voice: " _Clarissa_! How _are_ you?"

"Hi, Maryse—I'm good, how about you?" I cringe, wishing I had just let the phone ring and continued to flip through the art catalogue.

"I've been better, but…I have a favour to ask of you, Clarissa, and I do hope you'll agree."

"…What is it?" I don't want to know—good god, I do not want to know—

"You recall the charity gala I was telling you and your mother about? Well, you see…I would like for you to accompany Jace."

I think I'm choking. My tongue is a dead weight in my mouth, I can't speak for the life of me and Maryse's pretending-to-be-concerned voice floods my ears.

But I don't hear any of it.

Finally, though, I manage to get out, "Like—a— _date_?"

She laughs, a crackling sound in my ear and I'm not sure if it's her voice, or if the connection is shaky. "Not necessarily. _Act_ as his date, is what I'm asking, but I really need someone to keep an eye on him—make sure he doesn't sneak off or do anything that might reflect poorly on the rest of us." Maryse's request sounds perfectly…normal, reasonable, even. I want to gape—because reasonable is not really a word associated with Maryse Lightwood as far as I know—but I don't because the bell above the door rings and a guy walks in, looking around like he's lost.

"Clarissa?" She asks, and I realize I must have just stood there with the phone pressed against the side of my face, silent, instead of telling her what I've decided against my better judgement.

"Sorry—um, listen Maryse. A customer just came in, but, yeah, I'll do it—but I don't have anything to wear." I don't want to tell her I can't afford the kind of clothes I know she wants and probably expects me to wear.

"Of course!" And it's kinda freaky, because Maryse Lightwood doesn't resemble her daughter in the slightest outside of their appearances', but Maryse almost sounds like Izzy when she's happy. "Of course, Clarissa. You can spend the weekend with Isabelle and I, we're getting spa treatments and going dress shopping. Oh you'll _adore_ it! And don't you worry yourself about a thing, darling." With that, Maryse hangs up and despite the fact that I'll have to spend god knows many hours with Jace glued to me, I can't help grinning; a whole weekend of spa treatments and pampering with one of my best friends?

Uh, yes please.

* * *

"I don't believe you actually—you said _YES_?"

"I'll answer you when you're done screaming."

"Okay—I'm done—I think," Izzy sighs, folding her hands in her lap as she sits down on the edge of her bed.

" _Finally_ ," I roll my eyes, glancing over at her from where I'm laying on my back, staring up at the ceiling, shirt slowly riding up my stomach and being swallowed by an abyss of pillows on her bed. "But yeah, I said yeah."

" _WHY_?"

I scowl at her, but feel it drop from my face just as fast as I put it there. "I don't know. Getting all dressed up and spending the weekend with you sounds pretty convincing, crazy more so when your mother pulled out the 'spa treatments' card."

"And this had _nothing_ to do with my brother?" She raises her dark eyebrows at me, and she's being so loud I'm glad Jace has his music blaring so loud the floor is vibrating (he's having a hissy fit about the whole being my…company at the gala).

I hesitate.

The feeling of his skin burning under my lips is still haunting me, his arms knotted around my waist, the smell of booze and cologne stinging my nose, the butterflies rearing up in my stomach and fluttering around my ribs, the sound of his voice in my ear, the gold of his eyes almost completely engulfed by the black of his pupils—

"Earth to Clary," Izzy waves her hand in front of my face. " _Heellllllloooooo_?"

Flushing, I look up at her again. "What?"

"It's okay to like him, you know," Isabelle tells me, her voice suddenly soft and quiet like she is talking to an animal she is trying really hard not to scare off. I don't look at her; I keep staring up at her faintly off-white ceiling, sketching 3D cubes on my stomach with the pad of my finger.

"I don't," the response is automatic. I'm about to spit out a list of pre-compiled reasons I have not to like him at all—like stealing my pencil crayons, yanking on my ponytail, teasing me mercilessly, being an outright jerk sometimes—when the filter between my brain and mouth stops me for a second. _Do_ I like him?

Is that even possible?

No. I don't think it is. I have no reason to like him—even if there's that kind of cute thing he does with his shoulders when he's nervous—or that stupid grin with that stupid chipped incisor that's kind of crooked—or the way he looks at me sometimes—

God. I have a problem.

"No, I don't think I like him, Iz."

"You _think_?" She prods with the most patient look on her face, like she's willing to sit beside me all night and wait for me to admit to being crazy about her brother. That's _so_ not going to happen, even if I can admit to the fact that he's practically physically flawless.

"I'm positive, Iz. If you haven't noticed by this point, Jace is kind of a—"

"Dickhead?"

We both laugh, and Izzy's eyes are practically shining with excitement when the laughter has died out. "Dress shopping, Clare—I'm _so_ freaking excited! You have _no_ idea, Clarissa Adele."

"Oh, I'm sure I do."

"Even so, I'm going to make you try on so many dresses your head will not only spin, but your hands will be stained with dye and you'll have gotten a work out." I don't doubt that one bit, and the fact that I'm fully prepared to let Izzy drag me from store to store and am going willing try on what will more than probably be hundreds of dresses in every style and colour known to the human population is proof that spending so much time around her has melted the rational part of my brain that should be screaming at me about just how unpleasant the experience is going to be, factoring in sore feet and frustration with Isabelle's disapproval of any and _every_ thing.

But instead of the rational part of my brain kicking into gear, I grin, "Bring it on, Lightwood."

* * *

My feet are aching and my arms are sore from carrying around four hundred pounds worth of dresses. Izzy is giving me a break, trying on an Elie Saab dress she went absolutely nuts over.

She peeks her head out the dressing room curtain. "Zip me," she orders and turns, lifting up her hair so I have easy access to the zipper on the inside of the dress. When I've zipped it we both back out of the room that's a little small for trying on the type of flowing, poufy dresses they sell here.

"OHMYGOD!" Isabelle squeals, bringing her hands up to her face, her eyes wild and sparkling like the dark depths of the ocean in sunlight. "This dress—!" I know exactly what she means: with light blue beading that gets closer together and more intricate as you get closer to the bottom and a gold wrap-around belt that meets in the front in the form of two shining leafs, it's ridiculously gorgeous and fits her like a glove, clinging to every curve of Izzy's willowy body. I can picture her waltzing into that charity gala with her hair swishing and rolling down her back like spilt ink, her cheekbones sharp and glittering under the lights.

Imagining it makes me excited all over again, and my sore feet no longer seem half as relevant and deserving of attention as my want to find a dress—one that makes my hair look like fire burning against my skin and makes me feel as confident as Izzy looks in her own dress as she poses in front of the mirror.

* * *

"Oh oh! Saw 3 is coming on in an hour—let's watch _that_!" Isabelle reaches her greedy little paws across Simon's lap in an attempt to snatch the remote from him, talking through a mouthful of partially chewed popcorn. I stare at the date written in neat print on the screen of the TV guide—Saturday already, and I can't stop squirming in my seat. A whole night next to Jace.

"We are not watching Saw 3, Iz," Simon looks down at her with an expression that's part disapproving part _Are you out of your mind?_

"Why not? Thought you guys _liked_ scary movies," she relents, moving to settle back into her spot against the arm of the couch, chomping loudly.

"Because I'm sure I speak for the both of us when I say I don't feel the need to see people being tortured by a puppet," he shakes his head, long strands of dark hair falling across his forehead and covering his eyebrows and then pushes his glasses up.

"Is that what it's about?" I ask, leaning forward so I can see the both of them from my spot against the other arm of the couch, my legs stretched out in the empty space between me and Si—I may or may not be purposefully shoving them as close as humanly possible together. Both of them shrug as if to say they have no idea. "Okay, well, let's watch Family Feud instead. Can we all agree to that?" Izzy looks a little disgruntled but nods and goes back to picking through the popcorn bowl on her lap.

Simon is shouting out the answers to the questions Steve Harvey is asking, Izzy leaning her head against his shoulder, eyes half open, when Jace barges in. He slams the door and then stops when he sees us, and he is looking directly at me then suddenly he's looking anywhere but. His cheekbones are turning pink and I realize _I'm_ staring.

Again.

"Still throwing a hissy fit?" Izzy lifts her head off Si's shoulder and raises her eyebrows. Jace opens and closes his mouth a few times before shrugging noncommittally. Then he turns and books it up to his room, where he proceeds to slam that door, too.

Cue Maryse Lightwood storming in, evidently laden with the shopping bags hanging from her arms: "Jonathan Christopher!" She yells up the stairs, dropping the bags onto the floor, "That boy…I swear…" She looks to the three of us and her expression shifts until she's smiling. "Clarissa, Isabelle. How do the two of you feel about heading to the spa?"

* * *

Over the next four hours, I'm plucked, pampered, waxed, and just about everything else you can think of. One lady squeezes at my face until another shoves her out of the way and paints a face mask on me. A different woman does my nails a shimmery white and then tops it with shellac. Another expertly waxes my brows, shaping and trimming to perfection. Then she goes to work on waxing my legs—and suffice to say that I wasn't expecting it when she ripped the first strip off: my entire leg jerked and then tensed up. And then she ripped another off.

Izzy waggles her newly-done brows at me as Maryse swipes her more than likely well-used and loved card through the debit machine. "Mom wants to go to a salon and get hair treatments. She can't shut up about how 'absolutley divine' she thinks your hair'll look. For once, I have to agree with her. You're gonna look amazing tonight, babe."

I grin at her. "We both will."

* * *

The clock on Isabelle's bedside table is blinking _7: 02 pm_ when we get back to the McMansion the Lightwoods call a house, and my skin and hair are so magnificently smooth I'm afraid to touch them.

There really isn't an appropriate way to describe how I'm feeling other than ecstatic mixed with nerves in the form of butterflies that keep fluttering around in my ribs and floating up into my throat and tying my stomachs into knots. We have an hour and a half left until we leave and I'm stuck on Jace's arm instead of giggling with Izzy as we attempt and fail to slow dance because Jace Herondale doesn't know how to just sit stoically at a table, hands folded in his lap and _be good_.

But I don't let myself think about Jace as Izzy and I bustle around her room, looking for key makeup items—like her mascara, which for some reason, she had on the very top shelf of her closet, and her eyeliner, which was stuffed inside of a furry pink pillow case in her laundry basket.

"How did it even manage to get inside the pillow case?" I wonder aloud as Izzy very neatly and precisely applies a coat of coral lipstick. When she's satisfied with the clean, sharp lines, she spins to face me, eyes crinkling with her mischievous smile.

"I don't know, but what I do know is that _you_ need your makeup done." I was planning on doing my own makeup once she was finished hogging the mirror, but the glimmer in Izzy's eyes tells me that is not going to happen. And I don't throw a hissy fit about it, because if I'm honest with myself, my best friend is much more advanced when it comes to makeup and can easily apply eyeliner without smudging it all over her face. I'll have to ask her to show me sometime.

She tells me to close my eyes while she works her magic—or probably just so she doesn't put eye shadow on my eyeball. She laughs when I cringe away from one of her brushes sweeping across my jaw, the bristles tickling my neck. I'm not sure how long it takes her to do my makeup, but when she's done I can hear the excitement in her voice when she tells me to open my eyes and then spins my around in my chair—with some measure of effort not to scratch the floor—to face the mirror.

I smile brightly at my reflection, looking back at Isabelle; sure my smile is going to split my face with the force of it. Maybe it's stupid and shallow, but I just imagine Jace's jaw dropping when he sees me—my skin glowing, my eyelashes long and dark and my eyeliner flawless, my hair soft and supple and rolling down my back in waves like wildfire.

I _feel_ like wildfire: happy and alive, burning stronger with every breath I take.

* * *

Walking down the slightly curved stairs to the front door, I feel like every girl who ever gets the opportunity to walk down a curving staircase in heels and a pretty dress with an even prettier boy waiting for her at the bottom—nervous, exhilarated, and like a princess in nearly every sense and definition of the word.

Especially considering the corset-like, beaded bodice of my black dress and the price tag that had been attached to it.

With a sweetheart-neckline that shows off my shoulders— _scandalous_ —and collarbones spattered with freckles, with a large slit up the front—either side of the slit decorated with a line of gold and silvery petal and rose designs—that reveals a opaque black skirt brushing a few centimetres above my mid-thigh, it's something that my Dad would never let me out of the house in if he ever saw me in it.

Which is why I'm not going to show him pictures until I'm moved out and in college.

Jace holds his hand out to me, and instead of brushing past it like I'd debated doing, I take it lightly in mine and smile up at him—nearly a whole foot higher up than me. His eyes don't waver from mine, seemingly glowing from the inside out. His left cheek is dimpled from the wide grin lighting up his features and— I'm staring. Again. I am mortified, and that mortification starts to display itself on my face as my cheeks heat to what I'm sure is a lovely crimson shade bright enough to rival my hair, when I realize that Jace has been staring right back at me.

"If you guys are gonna make out or something can't you at least find a closet or something?" Izzy says, exasperated and holding onto the handle of the open door. Her words bring an image to mind that makes me blush much harder than before—Jace and me, locked in a closet, my back against the wall, his lips on my throat and my jaw, trailing upwards, my hands knotted in his golden curls, breathing hard as his hands grasp at my waist.

I turn away from Jace's faintly dazed expression, hurrying out the door side by side with Izzy, worrying that just from the look on my face the both of them are able to more or less guess the kind of images floating through my head.

* * *

 **Ugh. Sorry if that wasn't as good as you were hoping guys, or as entertaining. I feel like I'm losing my touch.**

 **Anyways, onto les reviews.**

 **WilliamTheGirl: If I could manufacture my best friend, they would be 85% Izzy (cause I love her so much too) and like 5% Jon, and the other 10% would just be like some weird glitch where they like get muscle spasms and like accidentally punch the barista in the face when the barista gives them their coffee. That _might_ have been a little off topic - but, short version, I love Izzy too. And Jace is a freak because he doesn't know how to deal with his emotions like a normal person.**

 **Yumna98: I love awkward Jace. And sorry about the lack of updates - just been busy, last semester really kicked my butt and I was just too stressed to try and write especially when I didn't know where I was going with my stories. I'm fine, thanks for asking, and I'm really hoping to start updating frequently. I miss updating weekly like I did when I first started writing Fading and I Hate You.**

 **I'm A Dreaming Writer: MY POOR BABY JON. HE'S TOO PRECIOUS TO HAVE HIS HEART BROKEN. But I'm gonna do it anyway for the sake of plot. I'm a bad person. The dynamic between Jon and Clary is literally my favourite thing, okay. Like they fight and argue and sneak otu together and defend each other and they're essentially best friends. It's such a...complex thing in my head and I hope I end up doing it justice when this trilogy of sorts is over and done with. Jace stuttering around Clary is my aesthetic.**

 **oesteffel: Don't watch Marley & Me. Just don't do it, save yourself the heartache and dehydration from crying so much. Nah it's not weird to want to live inside Clary's head - I mean, look at me, writing her inner monologue. So if anyone is weird here, it's me. ****Oooh, you'll find out why Jace is stuttering (insert smirking face here). OH MY GOD IT WAS NOT HEAVY BECAUSE IT HAD (insert me spluttering here) _THAT_ IN IT. NO NOPE NO WAY. i'm such a liar there probably was some of those in there. It's Jace. And yes, THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF CLACE.**

 **Guest: I intend to finish all of my stories, even if it means I have to go back and restructure the whole thing so that I _can_ finish them. Nervous Jace and Jon are two of the best things I've ever written or ever will write. **

**Drop me a review and tell me what you thought about this chapter! Love ya! :))**


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